“Do you want to tell us now,” Gavigan asked ominously, “or have it sweated out of you at headquarters?”
Brooke shrugged. “If you’ll stop barking at me, I’ll tell you now. If Floyd’s spilled it, there’s no point in my keeping quiet. He knew that Lamb intended to get a diver to investigate. He was impatient. Maybe he had last-minute doubts. I don’t know. He wanted to get a look first, himself.”
“Why’d he have to go down in the middle of the night?” Gavigan rapped suspiciously.
Brooke raised an eyebrow. “That means nothing. At 110 feet it’s pitch black at any time. And the diving in this river has to be done at slack water. Low tide was at 10:30.”
“The séance was to cover the diving, wasn’t it?”
“Well, yes. Partly. He didn’t want Lamb to know. He begged off the séance, had Henderson take him into town, and came back in the taxi. Why he tells you about the diving and won’t admit that, I don’t know. He dived and he satisfied himself that it was the Hussar.”
“He found a couple of bucketfuls of guineas?”
Ira’s hesitation was lengthy. Then he said, “Yes.”
“Where are they?”
“He took them with him.”
“Why? Why didn’t he run in and show them to Lamb and Linda? It was proof wasn’t it?”
“Yes. But — I don’t know why. He was running the show. Ask him.”
Merlini said, “How long was Floyd down?” His voice came from the doorway, where he stood looking at a typewritten sheet of paper thumbtacked to the wall.
“Just a bit under an hour. He fouled his lines once, and it took him about 15 minutes to get untangled.”
“How much decompression did you give him?”
“I followed the reading on that diving table. Three minutes at 20 feet, 10 at 10, plus the two allowed for hoisting him—15 altogether.”
Merlini took out the thumbtacks and carried the sheet to the drafting table. Then he rummaged through a stack of books on the bunk in the corner. He found one, seated himself, and turned to the index. I caught a glimpse of the title: Deep Diving and Submarine Operations by R. H. Davis.
“Did you advise Floyd against diving?” he asked.
“Yes,” Brooke nodded slowly. “He hadn’t done any in ten years. He’s lots heavier and he’s been drinking too much. But he went anyway.”
“Don’t you think you should have refused to assist him? He couldn’t dive without your help.”
Brooke looked at him a long time. “What do you mean by that? He was all right when he left me— Oh! I begin to get it. The bends hit him later. Did you get him into a decompression tank?”
Merlini didn’t bother to look up from his book. He thumbed the pages rapidly. “You know we didn’t.”
Gavigan followed up quickly. “Floyd died of the effects of his diving an hour or two afterward. At the Hotel McKinley. You were there. You undressed him, shaved off his mustache, carried his body down the fire escape, and shoved it into an unoccupied room. Very clever. No clues to identify. What did you do with his clothes — and the guineas?”
Ira took an involuntary step backward toward the door. “Floyd told you all that, too, I suppose. Rappourt get a psychic message for you?”
“Maybe. You believe that’s possible, don’t you?”
“I–I don’t know — I—”
“Changing your mind all of a sudden, aren’t you? We know more, too. This houseboat has been an excuse for a lot of funny stuff. Pretending to be hard at work out here, you’ve been commuting in to town in that boat of yours instead. After you moved Floyd’s body, you came back to the island, typed a note on the typewriter at the house, forged Floyd’s signature, and put it aboard the 1:20 for Buffalo yesterday afternoon. You wanted it to look as if he were still alive. A play for time. But you made a couple of boners. You picked a lousy train, and you used the wrong typewriter. Well?”
“I’ve heard enough. I want a lawyer.”
“And, finally, you were overheard just a few minutes ago laying plans to knock one of my men on the head and take it on the lam. I have a witness to that.”
“That’s a lie.”
“You’re under arrest. Take him in, Malloy.”
Brooke didn’t move. “Charged with what?” he asked.
“Moving a body without a permit, forging, falsifying and concealing evidence. Also murder.”
Brooke looked at Gavigan steadily for a moment. Then he took a cigarette from his pocket, tapped it on the back of his hand, and, turning, walked to the door. He stopped there and said stiffly, “I’m allowed one phone call before you jug me. I want to instruct my lawyer to start a suit for false arrest. You’ve put your foot in it, Inspector.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Gavigan said lightly. “Get going.”
Merlini spoke up. “Before you go, Brooke. This decompression table you used. Take a look at it.” He stepped forward with the sheet in his hand.
Brooke scowled suspiciously and glanced at the chart. I saw his eyes become suddenly bright and sharp. When he looked up, there was excitement on his face. His voice crackled.
“This isn’t the same chart! It’s not right! Someone—”
“I wondered if you’d say that. Look.” Merlini held-out the diving book and pointed. “It checks with the Navy tables in this book. And Floyd should have had 57 minutes of decompression time. Not 15.
Ira stared at the book. “Someone — someone—”
“You’re quite right. Someone changed the tables. It’s murder after all, Inspector, and with a brand-new weapon. One that even the Doctor didn’t think of. Brooke,”—Merlini’s voice was edged and fine—“who else knew that you and Floyd were going to dive?”
“No one,” Brooke said shakily. “No one but Madame Rappourt. Damn her!”
Chapter Eighteen:
MURDER WEAPON
Inspector Gavigan took the book and paper from Merlini and compared them. There was no sound for a moment except the dull watery slaps of the river against the boat’s side, as the rising tide gently rocked it, and, now and then, a gentle groan from the aged timbers of the hull, as if some small discontented banshee were imprisoned there.
“At a depth of 108 to 120 feet,” Merlini said then, “a dive of nearly an hour requires four stops on the way up — of 5, 10, 15, and 25 minutes each, with a total ascent time of 57 minutes. The chart in the book also points out in extra-black type that 35 minutes is the longest a diver should remain down at that depth, except in unusual circumstances. If you’ll turn back a few pages, you’ll find that 15 minutes of decompression for a dive of nearly an hour isn’t good for anything over 60 feet, not much more than half the depth here.”
“Yes,” Gavigan said. “But why are you so sure the tables were changed? We’re not taking Brooke’s word for that. He could have purposely not given Floyd enough time. And if they were changed, he could have done it himself, so Floyd wouldn’t notice anything wrong.”
“But, knowing 57 minutes was correct, he wouldn’t have just admitted to but 15, would he? Besides—”
Gavigan interrupted, turning on Brooke. “If you’re such an expert on submarine work, why didn’t you notice that the table had been monkeyed with? Answer me that.”
Ira appeared to be recovering a bit. He had some of his old bounce back. “You don’t expect me to carry a dozen pages of figures in my head, do you? Can you rattle off all the vital crime statistics for the last three years?”
“If you’ll take a squint at the wall, Inspector,” Merlini put in soothingly, “where this typewritten sheet was tacked, you’ll notice a couple of extra thumbtack holes to each tack.”
Gavigan looked and nodded. “Yes, but what was there before might have been anything.”